ON DEMOCRACY. [Kansas City Times, January 24, 1887.] TO BE KILLED AGAIN. Prophets of evil are abroad in the land: First a speck and then a vulture, Everywhere in the darkness there can be heard the flapping of invisible wings and the whetting of insatiable beaks. It is the Democratic party which is to be slaughtered again and picked to the bones. And by whom? By what process? Through what sort of revolutionary uprising or upheaval? The new labor party, already as good as formed, is to be the butcher, a white apron above its paunch and its feet to the knees dabbled in great pools of blood. The republican orators have decreed it. The Republican newspapers have proclaimed it. All that servile crowd of camp followers, who find private benefit in public disorders and who prefer the favor of a master to the inexorable equality of the law, are praying for it hourly. Blaine has declared it with something of the apocalyptic vision the pirate had when he saw in his dreams a Spanish galleon beating up from the Indies with a clear king's ransom in silver and gold. Well, the old thing called the Democratic party has been considerably bruised and battered up in its day and generation. It has been proscribed, bedeviled, shot at, carpet-bagged, pro-consuled, hunted up one side of the country and down another; but when they came with a coffin to carry away the corpse the corpse was not forthcoming. All of its long and memorable life it has been always just on the eve of destruction. Federalism was to put it to death. Federalism was buried in the grave of the elder Adams. The Whig party-its pure, its true and its strongest opponent -came next to die with its mighty leader, Clay. Knownothingism came next, fighting under the black banner of religious intolerance, but Virginia, putting into the hands of Henry A. Wise her spotless Democratic banner, slew the monster at the very gates of liberty. Then the war came, and the very blackness of darkness swept over the fortunes of the Democracy. Out of the white heat and torment of that war the Republican party seized upon the North in the name of patriotism, and held it for the spoils of a savage partisan vengeance. The South had never a limb that did not wear a shackle. For twenty-four long, weary, hungry, discorsolate years the Democratic party dragged its crippled body up to the defense of the Constitution, only to be beaten back or beaten down by the Republican organization, rioting in the excess of colossal strength, drilled like a regiment and despotic like an army. True, within the period named Mr. Tilden was elected president, but the victory was a hateful one, because it was torn from the hands of those who had won it without an effort at defense or even a suggestion of protest or resistance. Four years later Garfieldbuttressed upon the money power, and the whole tremendous influence of the Federal patronage machine-defeated Hancock, and made the night darker and darker for the Democracy. It rallied, however. Patched as best it could its tattered old garments. Dressed as best it could its battered old ranks. Gathered as best it could about its ragged old banner, and rushed once more to the asasult upon Radicalism as though Jefferson had written its platform and Jackson were leading its columns to the fight. This time the hero was destimed to enjoy the victory and the martyr to wear the crown. Not a hand was lifted to stay the inauguration of Cleveland. After renewing its youth the party was back again in the house of its father-serene, unconquerable, and healed of all of its grievous and manifold wounds, even as Lazarus was healed in the bosom of Abraham. While attempting to prove the indestructibility of the Democratic party from the brief history we have given of the organizations it has successfully encountered, the sacrifices it has made and the sufferings it has heroically endured, we have said nothing of the no less formidable enemies it has had to grapple within many of the States. Whatever sprang up in the shape of an ism, a craze, or a local uprising, there was the Democratic party, square in the breach, fighting the one long, eternal fight for the repose and the integrity of the national organization. It might be greenbackism, or tadpoleism, or prohibition, or whatever other name these emeutes went by, the party set its face against them like a flint, and sooner or later carted them all away to the potter's field, many a time without even a shroud or a coffin. And now the cry is that organized labor is to kill the Democratic party. What for, in the name of common sense and the simplest instincts of common self protection? If the Democratic party from the very first hour of its creation up to the present hour has not been the friend of the laboring man, then kill it. If it has not, both in and out of Congress, fought every kind and species of monopoly, kill it. If it has not stood as a wall against every land grant, grab orsteal, and every extravagant appropriation, kill it. If it has not been a constitutional party in every bone and fiber, seeking to preserve home rule and States' rights in their very essence and purity, without which no republic can be long free, kill it. If, in short, it has not been the steadfast and unselfish friend of the oppressed, no matter by whom, or how, or in what fashion, kill it. But if, after having been all these things, there is a single honest workingman to-day in the country who would vote to destroy the Democratic party, that same workingman would murder his father. Parricide is parricide, whether political or social, and a party of parricides is as impossible in America as that an immaculate soul, washed white in the blood of the Lamb, should not enter heaven. NOT MEN ENTIRELY. [Kansas City Times, March 8, 1887.] In adversity the attitude of the Democratic party was superb. In six desperate presidential campaigns did it_drag its battered and crippled old limbs up to an assault upon the Republican party-that splendidly organized party born of the Civil War, the spoiled child of pillage and the sword, intrenched in the treasury, claiming to own the nation by the divine right of Appomattox Court House, hobnobbing with God Almighty in its platforms, and calling Him boss, with the reconstruction ægis over it as a yellow flag over a hospital-six times, we say, did the Democracy rush to the fight, successful only in its last encounter with the giant of Radicalism. It was a gaunt and grizzled old thing, this Democratic party. It had hungered and thirsted for a long time. It had laid out of nights, and slept in corn shocks, and gone barefooted many times, and had cockleburrs in its hair, and needed quinine powerful bad for its "ager shake," and spoke a strange gibberish about the Constitution, and wanted to know where its little Meenie, called States' rights, was; but, God bless it! it was the same old glorious Rip at heart who had gone up into the mountain, singing like a school boy and jocund like a reveler. And now what? Nothing, except that it has got fat again. In renewing its youth it has become somewhat obstreperous. The old house appears to be a little bit circumscribed. The old political family Bible appears to have been revised. Some of its chapters appear to have been interpolated with chapters on prohibition. The niche where once stood the radiant figure of the Constitution is filled with a gutta percha thing, chiseled by the hands of congressional jobbers, and made to cover every appropriation from a silk milch cow up to an ironclad which can not go to sea. As for States' rights, an overflowing public treasury put its velvet paw upon it, and ever since the contact it has purred at the feet of power as the little white mice purred and purred in the velvety hands of Count Fosco. Many saints have been persecuted and many martyrs stoned. In short, the Democratic party appears to be in a transition periodappears to be about changing front in presence of the enemy-something which Hannibal never attempted and which Bonaparte dared not do but thrice in his lifetime. This condition of things, however, is not calculated to encourage the opposition so much as to make its own old guard lukewarm or indifferent. The old Democratic party regarded the individual as the unit of society, upon the integrity of which society depended wholly. The personal liberty of the citizen. Jefferson and his associates drove the Federal party out of power on this issue, which was fundamental in the struggle which gave us our free government, and which produced the Constitution. As was the citizen so was the State. The State began at the family. Children were taught at the fireside to love it, to fight for it, to obeys its laws, to revere its institutions and to preserve for it every right guaranteed by the constitution. Hence the doctrine of States' rights, which once made the Democracy so dear to the people. Which gave to it its magnificent staying qualities, which enabled it to be grand in victory and august in defeat, and which, as contradistinguished from Federalism or centralization, made it essentially the party of the poor man and the pride of every true lover of liberty in the whole land. If it would still retain its hold upon the country it must come back to first principles. It must show that it is fit to reign by stamping upon its administration the features of the great organic law under which it was created. To do this it must be economical in the handling of public money. It must get rid of the idea, as soon as possible, that this is a paternal government, and that whenever there is either a flood, a drouth, a murrain among cattle, a splenetic fever, or a fever of any sort, the only cure is to open the treasury doors. It must extirpate mugwumpery in its own ranks by putting a Simon-pure Democrat in every Federal office in the United States. It must go oftener to the shrine of Andrew Jackson and less to the living presence of those independent fellows who strive a lifetime to take the backbone out of American politics and invent new names for party fealty, truth and devotion. There is yet plenty of time to do all these things, but they must be done thoroughly and in perfect order. The place to begin is in the next Congress. The Democrats have a majority in the House, and upon the work of this majority much will depend that is not now believed in or even imagined. EVERY TUB ON ITS OWN BOTTOM. [Kansas City Times, July 17, 1887.] It makes not one particle of difference whether the labor party does or does not put a presidential ticket in the field. We take it for granted that it will. Or the Henry George party. We take it for granted that it will. Or the prohibition party. We take it for granted that it will; but it does make a wonderful sight of differ ence what the Democratie party proposes to do in the premises. Let these various organizations do as they please. This is a free country, and the greater the multiplicity of parties, we suppose, the greater the magnitude of personal or political liberty. Parties are everything in a republic. In France there are some twenty odd, probably. However; all this, the Democratic party has only itself to depend upon primarily for success in 1888. Some great overmastering principle must be enunciated by it, and so emphasized as to carry conviction home with it and make it also fragrant and alluring with the truth. Nothing that is fast-and-loose, hot-or-cold, maybe-so-yes or may-be-so-no can live an hour in the winds and the storms of the next campaign. Questions have arisen which have got to be answered, and the Democratic party must give its answer in such a way as will make the dust of old Andrew Jackson quicken and stir in its last resting place. Platforms generally are milk and cider. They mean broadcloth or blue jeans. Big sunflowers or scarlet japonica buds. Something that is soft, pliant and easy to handle. Something that suggests: "Let me tangle my hand in your hair, Jeanette; But in the next national Democratic platform there must be two or three planks which need to be all iron. No metaphor. No lullaby rhetoric, singing a soft, low song at the cradle of interpretation. No apple plucked and pitched into the committee on resolutions by Henry Watterson to be pared by Mr. Randall until it might be a peach, or a quince, or an ivory billiard ball. Our country at last has come face to face with the necessity of few words and many deeds. The prayers now put up must be like Sir Richard Waller's riding down to Naseby: "O, Lord! Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do Thou not forget me. March on, boys.' It is not necessary for the Democratic party to do aught else except to deal frankly and justly with the people. In many directions they seem somewhat bewildered. Beset by a multitude of recruiting officers for all sorts of organization, they simply need to be made able to lay hands upon Democracy. Therefore its organization must be perfect; its discipline of the old days; its platform the law and the gospel; its declarations patriotic but adamant, and its every movement that of something which is being led and guided by the Constitution. Three times in the history of this republic has the Democratic party prevented a change in its present form of government. As for labor it has given it everything it now possesses in the way of hearty recognition, liberal laws and strong safeguards to prevent the least encroachment. Since it was created it has been especially the party of the poor man and the stranger. It has nothing to fear from honest labor, although there may be fifty so-called labor tickets in the field, and all working against it. Let all things else go except a full and perfect reliance upon its own resources. Call back its old time energy and discipline, and the people will do the rest. BOURBON DEMOCRACY. [Kansas City Times, May 22, 1888.] One hears much of this term lately. It is as glib in the mouths of certain republican men and newspapers as the forked tongue in the mouth of a snake. And just as glibly does it dart in and out, by its rapidity something like a nerve that jumps and throbs under galvanism, and something like a cut-throat in ambush where the hedge is thickest, or the road the most lonely and God-forsaken. In their estimation Bourbon Democracy means to pull down; burn school-houses; retrograde; have here and there a touch of the thumb-screw; the rack also upon occasions; proscription always; guerrillas out in the underbrush; all the better if a few train robbers ride and raid; breaking into the strong places where the public money is kept; chaos; no more law and order; no more jails; the Rebels in the saddle; and no pitch hot in any available direction. The truth about Bourbonism in Missouri is just this: It got its name from the fact that it would not steal in the old days, nor disfranchise, nor break into meeting-houses to deprive other denominations of their property, nor confiscate railroads, nor run away with county funds, nor be generally unclean, despicable and dishonest. True, a Bourbon Democrat delighted in the past. He believed in the old-fashioned way of doing things. He lived in peace with his neighbors. He burnt neither their hay, their wheat nor their straw stacks. Nor was one ever known to break into a smoke-house. He believed in the family, and taught his children to rely upon it as the basis of all society, the foundation upon which the State rested, the bulwark against which all the Cossacks in the world could not prevail when they came to attack civil and religious liberty. He liked his dram and got the best that was going. No Puritanical processes invaded his sanctuary, preaching free love on the one hand and prohibition on the other. Virtue was a shrine at which all the brave Missourians worshiped. The seducer, before the lust had died out of his heart, died on his own dunghill. The Bourbon Democrat was also a pastoral American. He hunted, fished, plowed, loved the woods, laughed and sang at his work, indulged much in reverie, which is the parent of sadness, did not know how to lie, never knew the road to Canada with his stolen goods and chattels, would have put his wife or daughter to death before permitting either to work or vote at the polls, the one with the straddle or the waddle of an alligator on land, the other with the leer or the musky smell of the street walker. What a happy commonwealth, this great one of ours! Peace, plenty, prosperity, happiness, truth, manhood, courage, money in bank, thoroughbreds in pastures, the devil beyond the Alleghanies, and each man's fireside his altar and his citadel. One day the sky grew suddenly black as one of Pharoah's Egyptian midnights. In the darkness there were heard the footsteps of men in motion. The travail of civil war was at hand and portentious births came everywhere to the surface. The face of Missouri changed as suddenly as the maps Napoleon used to make of |